• 6 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • Storage has just not been able to keep up with demand

    The thing is that things are evolving incredibly fast in this space. Renewables have gone from being more expensive than the alternatives to being the cheapest option by a large margin in the span of a decade, and prices are still plummeting. This trend can be observed for both renewables (solar/wind) and different storage technologies. The reason we’re not seeing them online at a large scale yet is that they’ve quite simply just recently become economical to do so. Nuclear does very much not have this property - it trends towards being more expensive over time. Given how long these projects take to build, it’s not out of the question that they will have to shut down on account of being just way too expensive in comparison once the projects are finished.

    There is no reason at the same time to prevent investment in nuclear and other non-carbon emitting solutions, and if tech companies are willing to foot the bill we shouldn’t complain. Every gigawatt counts at this point.

    I generally agree with this - any private actor that wants to build nuclear completely on their own dime and at their own risk should be able to do so. The problem is that this is not what’s happening - these companies often get government funding for these initiatives, which displace investments that could otherwise be going to other more viable solutions.

    Take Sweden for example, where the right wing government campaigned on renewables being too woke and that nuclear is the only option. The way they are making nuclear happen is by guaranteeing financing at favourable terms, plus offering guaranteed pricing of the output electricity for these plants. This is going to be massively expensive for tax payers, and is actively making it so that other renewables are not getting built.

    Since nuclear takes so much time to build out and is so unviable from a financial perspective, it’s also used as an excuse by fossil fuel interests, that get to stay in business comparatively longer in a scenario where the world tries to pursue nuclear vs where the world pursues renewables.

    This is why nuclear support should generally be met with skepsis.


  • Iit’s okay if you don’t like that one scientist. because there are dozens of other computer security experts who have come to the same conclusion, that since Trump’s lawyers admitted to hiring people to steal voting software used by 90% of voters in swing states, manual recounts should be implemented.

    Feel free to source it with concrete probable claims that have been verified by reputable sources.

    I think manual counting should be the norm - all votes are counted manually in my country - but it’s unlikely that you will be able to get anyone to actually pull the trigger without concrete evidence of interference.

    The Republicans have zero evidence of election interference.

    Agreed.

    democrats have straight up factual evidence of ballot, interference and electoral fraud.

    Post it, then.

    do you know about how W won the 2004 election?

    I know how the 2000 election got stolen by Bush, but I’m not aware of the same thing happening in 2004. Feel free to fill in details.

    do you know about the fake elector scheme 4 years ago?

    Yes. It was never put into practice. Trump did try to institute a coup, but failed.

    have you ever heard of gerrymandering?

    Yes, this is a well-known example of legal election interference. Hand-counts won’t help in this case.

    voter poll purging?

    Same here

    Republican ballot interference has happened every election for decades, and it looks like it happened on a wider scale this time.

    Instances of legal election interference are not proof of illegal election interference occurring.







  • The case for an H2 economy is one entirely based on Green H2 made from surplus renewables which are needed most days to have enough renewable energy every day.

    Wouldn’t it be more compelling to store it in other types of batteries instead of H2 primarily?

    That gas companies know how to build pipelines, distribution, and make metered gas sales to customers is a path for them/employees to remain useful without destroying the planet.

    I honestly don’t think H2 is a good idea for these use-cases. H2 distribution is a different beast than natural gas distribution, on top of gas combustion just generally not being particularly good compared to common household electrical counterparts (induction for stoves, electric for ovens, heat pumps for heating buildings and water).

    Commercial vehicles has legitimate benefits of lower cost from H2 FCs than batteries. Quicker refuel times. Aviation especially benefits from redesigning planes for H2 for the weight savings. Trains/ships need the power/range. Trucks/cars can use the range extension, and could use H2 as removable auxiliary power for extended range.

    I imagine refueling times is not necessarily going to be critical for all types of commercial use-cases.

    Aviation struggles with the relatively low energy density in H2.

    Trains should essentially always be running on catenaries.

    Boats might be able to make use of H2, I’m not super familiar with the issues affecting them.

    Long-hail trucking should broadly be replaced by the much more efficient rail shipping.

    Cars run pretty much fine on electric as is, I’m not sure the case for making H2 cars is compelling enough to be warranted.

    Ammonia and fertilizer is traditional use for H2.

    This might be a good niche for H2 to fill.

    All in all, I’m still not convinced that large-scale H2 buildouts is a good use of our resources, but there are definitely a few compelling niches that it can fill. We need to be wary of them being co-opted by blue hydrogen fossil fuel companies though, which often seems to be the case today.











  • I think this is actually a valid takeaway for the Democrats for the next election:

    You are on the clock to Noticeably Improve People’s Lives (NIPL) during your term, or your braindead electorate are going to flush the country down the toilet post-haste. While investing in long-term gains is important, all those investments will be sabotaged if you can’t improve people’s lives in a way they can actually tell, and critically, communicate it to the aforementioned braindead electorate so that they know the effect you had.